'NCIS' Star Pauley PerretteAttacked By Homeless Man'I Almost Died Tonight'

11/13/2015 6:15 AM PST

'NCIS' Star Pauley Perrette Attacked By Homeless Man

8:15 AM PT -- Police arrested the suspect ... a 45-year-old man named David Merck, and booked him for felony battery. ET got Pauley's sketch of Merck, and a photo one of her friends later took of him.

She could have a future in forensic art.

Pauley Perrette, who plays scientist Abby Sciuto on "NCIS," says a "psychotic homeless man" punched her in the face Thursday night and vowed he would kill her.

Perrette says she was walking from her Hollywood home to a guest house she owned when the guy appeared, repeatedly threatening to end her life.

It's a bizarre story. Perrette says she told the guy, who called himself William, that he had a "beautiful name" but he just unloaded and punched her again.

She says, "I went into shock ... collapsed on the sidewalk." She says cops came, she drew a "police sketch" of the guy, who was "headed towards Hollywood Blvd with murder in his eyes." Perrette says cops arrested him.